


Boomerang

by Janet_Coleman_Sides



Category: Kagaku Ninja Tai Gatchaman | Science Ninja Team Gatchaman
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Cross Karakoram, Earth's Destruction! 002, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-25 01:08:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janet_Coleman_Sides/pseuds/Janet_Coleman_Sides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Condor Joe makes a dying wish at Cross Karakoram.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boomerang

Finally.

Finally, they were gone. Into that pit of vipers, the last stand, the last hope. He had run his race. He had to trust them to finish theirs. At least he had had a chance to say goodbye. Unusually merciful, that. God was usually content to screw him completely.

Konduru no Joe lay on his back in the grass at Cross Karakoram, twitching, only dimly aware anymore that he was riddled with bullets, torn and bleeding to death. He didn't really mind. He was dying a warrior under an open sky, not an invalid in a disinfectant-reeking hospital -- and he had earned it fighting Galactor, as he had always sworn. He was still bound for Hell, but he could walk in _cocky_ , goddammit, even if he did have to go without the dark wings of the Condor cloaking him. And Ken...

All he could really feel anymore were the edges of Ken's boomerang that he clutched to his chest. Ken had understood, he thought vaguely, had known Joe would hate to have to walk unarmed into Hell...

No. No, Ken wouldn't have understood that at all. Joe had been Catholic, though, before his parents died, before his whole world had been torn into strips and then brutally reassembled. He could remember the little boy's fear of Hell only all too well, since after all he had been thrust into it that day on the beach. The laughing woman had said, 'sin of the father', and that fact seemed to snap into place for Joe -- he knew he was a cold killer, the spawn of killers. Oh, he'd fought for the right side, but he'd _enjoyed_ it, enjoyed killing. And Joe knew he was beyond redemption. Besides, he was dying unconfessed and unshriven...

Unconfessed...! For though he'd had a chance to say goodbye, he _hadn't_ said anything to Ken. All he'd said was, _Are you going to lecture me to the very end?_ What kind of last words were those to say to his best friend?

But Ken had done the right thing; Joe was proud. Had done the right thing, leaving him lying in the grass, and racing with the others to finish the mission Joe'd failed when he missed Berg-fucking-Katse with that cursed feather-fucking-shuriken.

He clutched the boomerang harder, with what little ebbing strength remained in his spasming hand. There seemed to be a wide, ringing space of silence around his head, his eyes strobing with holiday fireworks in purple and white. A _tugging_ commenced on him, as though his heart were a hooked fish; but for a few minutes more, Joe resisted the oncoming darkness to drag his hand up, inch by slow, agonizing inch, fighting the leaden short-circuits of disconnection sweeping up his spinal column as his body continued inexorably shutting down.

He dragged his hand up, to be ready to fling that boomerang into the Devil's teeth. Or -- and here a faint flare of the familiar anger gave him a push of another few inches -- if somehow he did go up, he could throw it at God Him-fucking-Self, the old bastard. For the life He had made Joe lead. For his parents, of course, for the needless suffering of so many. For making him a monster. But most of all, for His cruelty in letting him ever glimpse happiness at all, if He was only going to snatch it away.

He exhaled, trembling, and knew that if he did not consciously do so, he was not going to breathe again. He forced through the lethargy, deafened his ears to the insistent soothing voices buzzing along the glowing fishing-line, telling him to just let go, that he had succeeded his mission... Gritting his teeth around his unvoiced curses, Joe took another breath.

Pain found him again, then, in a terrible burst of clarity; and then his vision cleared. His arm was cocked back at last, ready to throw. Air hissed out through his teeth. He was ready now, goddammit. _Come and get me._

His head lolled to the right, and he stared unfocused at the gleam of the metal projectile in his blood-streaked fingers, thinking about the wings of the angel of Death... thinking about pure-white wings in a fluid sweep near his face as Ken knelt beside him and closed Joe's hand over the birdrang, his eyes huge with suppressed pain.

_Joe... forgive me. We swore we'd die together, but now we have to abandon you. Take this boomerang, at least. Hold it, as a memory of my feelings..._ Then a skip in his memory, a fast rewind to:

_...Are you going to lecture me to the very end?_

He forced himself to breathe, once more. It was slow and ragged and intensely painful. He did not much notice. He wished bitterly, far, far too late, that he had not wasted his last opportunity to say goodbye, to speak his heart. The bright-scaled fish that swum caged in his ribs struggled wildly against the insistent line.

_If only I could have had another chance._ God wouldn't give a shit, of course, what George Asakura's dying wish might be, but he could still make it, goddammit. Closing his eyes, Joe pressed his trembling lips to the boomerang, tasting his own blood, and then flung himself with it into the dark.

***

When the old man got to him he was not breathing. His hand lay slack, a fancy projectile weapon of some sort lying next to it in the blood-soaked grass. The old man hardened himself to the carnage around him as he worked feverishly to bundle his patient into a stasis unit. Dr. Rafael would be able to get the Condor back to his lab without further brain damage. He had had to wait to approach till the unnerved Galactors surrounding the entrance had panicked at the latest round of tremors, which coincided with Asakura's loss of consciousness, and vanished undergound like the vermin they were. 

Rafael pushed the unit on its anti-grav lifters into his vehicle and, instructing the pilot-mecha to fly them back to his laboratory, began the long, slow, meticulous task of reincarnating the fallen G-2 as a cyborg.

***

When he opened his eyes, he thought the old man was God. He really did. And there was more confusion occasioned by the name 'Rafael'. But when he finally absorbed what had happened, and the fact that it would be long months before he would be able even to move again, Joe had lots of time alone to think, oh yes in-fucking-deedy.

Well, well, well. God _did_ hear his dying wish -- AND God was a filthy bastard. He'd ridden the boomerang, but boomerangs came back, didn't they? Just as foolishly phrased wishes came back on the wisher.

He would, after all, have his second chance to speak his heart. Except that now, of course, his heart was an antimatter bomb.

But hadn't it always been? He closed his eyes in despair.

It didn't matter. It wouldn't matter if his heart were filled with confetti and a candy-fucking-surprise.

No one could love a machine.


End file.
